


Louis' Tears

by islasands



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), French Actor
Genre: Love, M/M, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-24
Updated: 2011-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-21 17:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands





	Louis' Tears

_Part 1_

Louis accepted his sister’s invitation to accompany her on a ski trip. He was close to his sister and he could not hide anything from her. She had come to his flat, concerned that he was not returning her calls. As soon as he opened the door she could see he was in trouble.  She took him in her arms. She knew better than to ask questions. Louis had never responded well to direct questioning. As a boy he was constantly being reprimanded for refusing to answer even the most innocuous of inquiries. He could never explain that thoughts came to him like passengers on a train. If he was too slow in opening the doors the train would depart with all its passengers remaining aboard . His parents and teachers would despair of him. But Louis didn’t care. He would calmly watch his father’s face reddening with anger, his mother’s eyes becoming even bluer with anxiety, his teachers’ self-control being sorely tested. And not a word would come from his lips.

From being considered a day-dreamer, he slowly gained the reputation of being a defiant child, and later, a secretive, self-willed youth. “Use your brains,’ was a common admonition of his growing years. It never occurred to anyone that he was in fact, doing just that. Where some children were ‘fussy eaters’ he was a fussy thinker. He had no time for surface details or for paddling in the shallow end of the conversational pool.

His sister knew this about him, and so did his closest friends, yet it was still a surprise to them when he became an actor, and a successful one. No one had foreseen that his ingrained reticence would be an invaluable asset in thespian pursuits.  His angular face, expressive dark eyes, and beautifully shaped lips were charismatic in and of themselves, but it was the way he so effortlessly and truthfully conveyed the inner life of characters that made him compelling viewing. He was one of those actors whose speech and gestures were impulses, rather than evidences, of thought and emotion.

Now, as passenger in his sister’s car, Louis was avoiding thinking and feeling by smoking as he watched the country side moving past him like frames of a film. Now there was a farmhouse, surrounded by trees, now a woman walking down the road with a baby in her arms. Now the fields ran by, clothed in the plain colours of cultivation, now a nondescript town. Now they crossed a river that was a ribbon of tarnished silver, now they passed vineyards whose vines were covered in veils. Louis was happy to be with his sister. She spoke little, she shared his cigarettes, she didn’t mind when he asked her not to play music. Music was the last thing he wanted in his life.

Months ago Adam had returned to Paris to see him. Prior to that visit they had spent countless hours on the phone. Louis would lie on his bed, in the dark, remembering what Adam looked like, what he felt like. The sound of his voice flooded his mind with memories of the smell of his armpits, the softness of his belly, the scarring of the skin on his face. He would remember how their love-making really had fulfilled that description – it truly had been a method for creating love.

But most of all he remembered how freely Adam expressed the shifts in his emotional weather. It was a relief to Louis to be with someone who either refused or was incapable of role-playing in relationships.

As the car wound its way up the hills there was nothing more to look at. The road twisted and turned through an endless bower of green. His sister, sensing the concurrence of a landscape that matched Louis’ emotional one, decided it was safe to talk.

“Do you love him, Louis?’ she said.

Louis instantly remembered the moment, at the airport, saying farewell to Adam, when Adam himself had asked him a version of that question. “Do you want to love me?” he had asked. It was such a strange question. “Do you want to love me?” Louis needed to think about it. To purchase time to think he had fobbed Adam off by saying, “That’s like me asking if you want to sing.” Adam had looked away. “I often don’t,” he said. He smiled at Louis. He shook his head. ‘Fuck, you are beautiful.” He suddenly pulled Louis close. He kissed him as though he was searching for something he badly wanted to find.

“When I’m inside you I want to own you,” he said. “Like a piece of dirt that I want to build a house on. I want to own you and come and go as I please.” He laughed but his eyes were not laughing.

Louis had one of his ‘train of thought’ moments. He could not allow it to stop for if he did the chances were high that he would make a frivolous answer. He wanted to open his heart and speak from it but he needed time to find its door.

“Please, wait,’ he said – in French. But already Adam was loosening himself from their embrace.

“I do not know how to answer you,” Louis continued, still speaking French.

Adam picked up his hand luggage. He took Louis’ arm. “When I get home I am going to buy a lifetime supply of candles,’ he said cheerfully, more to himself than to Louis.

They parted as friends, not as lovers.

The hills gave way to the mountains. On either side of the valley the mountains rose up, sullen at their bases, lost in thought at their peaks. “I’d like to stop,” Louis said to his sister. He climbed out of the car and wandered over the dry tussock. He looked down at a river that had cut so deeply into the rock it had not been visible from the road. Where the water was not white from rapids, it was a strange blue. His sister stood beside him.

“Yes, I do,” he said, in answer to his sister’s question. He looked down and kicked at the stones. He had deliberately answered in English, as though he wished someone else was there to hear his answer.

 _Part 2  
_

Halfway through the concert something inside Adam snapped. He looked out at the audience that was heaving and glittering like a phosphorescent sea, and then at the faces of his band members, gilded by the yellow lighting, their eyes black and glossy like the eyes of fish. He looked at his bare hand holding the microphone. The tattoo on the underside of his arm looked alive, as though it could lift off his skin and float elsewhere. He had the strangest sensation that he was underwater. He held out his arms, convinced that if he moved them the right way he could swim across the crowd and disappear into night above Berlin.

He closed his eyes. He could barely hear the drummer setting the beat of the next song. The song began but he lowered the microphone. He looked off stage and saw his mother and two of his dearest friends standing in the wings. The band kept playing, but each was looking to Adam for clues as to what was happening. Adam went to the side of the stage and found his water. He stood there looking at the stage. It was wavering like a mirage. He drank from the bottle, letting some of the water run down his chin onto his chest. He sang the entire show as though he was under water.

The concert reviews were outstanding. “Lambert is breaking into the vaults of human hearts and stealing their secrets, dirty and clean.” one reviewer said. Adam was in his hotel room, checking his emails. He was pleased for his manager, pleased for his label, pleased for his fans, but privately he was unmoved. The vault of _his_ heart was as empty as a blue sky. He longed for a physical space to match its spaciousness. He wasn’t lonely, he wasn’t unfulfilled. His life was richly rewarding, he had told an interviewer, and it wasn’t a lie. But he badly needed some space.

He went to bed and instantly fell asleep.

> He was riding a bicycle in the desert despite knowing that it was a stupid thing to do. In fact he hoped he didn’t bump into anyone that he knew, another stupidity, but hey, this was his dream. He could be as stupid as he liked.
> 
> The desert was rocky, not sandy, and flat, not hilly. In all directions, as far as his eye could see, there was endless stony ground. There were no trees, no rocky outcrops to break the endlessness. He rode on. The bike was old and the chain kept slipping. He would get off and kneel down, restoring the chain to the cogs. Then off he went, seldom looking up, keeping his eye on the ground in order to avoid the bigger stones. It was sunny and at the back of his mind he was aware that he was terribly hot and terribly thirsty, but somehow these things were of secondary importance to his task of staying on the bike.
> 
> At last, after travelling this way for hours, his bicycle buckled beneath him as though from exhaustion. He got off and examined the broken chain. He let the bicycle drop. He stared at the ground where it fell. Right at his feet was the beginning of a white path. Someone had raked the ground to expose an underlay of chalky white sand. He suddenly knew that if he followed this path, which stretched out in a perfectly straight line, he would arrive at his destination – where-ever or whatever that was.. He began to walk. As he walked he decided to sing. There was nothing else to do. His mind was more or less blank. He couldn’t think of anything to think. He opened his mouth and began to sing but nothing came out. Not a note, not a sound. Not even a whisper. My God, he thought, how did I not notice that I am dying of thirst? He stopped on his white track. The sun seemed to be at the same position it had been in when he first set out.
> 
> He sat down. He lay down. The sun bore down on him. He decided he wanted to cry but when he tried not only did no sound come out but also he could not manufacture tears.

Adam woke up. The phone was ringing, and someone was banging on his door. He answered the call and opened the door. His manager came in. They discussed the day’s events and travel arrangements. Adam showered and dressed and went downstairs to have breakfast with his musical director. The dream was forgotten.

He did not remember it until a few days later when his manager was leaving the bar where they and the band had been celebrating the last of their UK gigs. “Oh, this came,’ she said, holding out a letter. Adam recognized the handwriting. It was from his mother. How odd. She usually kept in touch via email. He tore it open and saw that the envelope contained another one, marked with his name. He decided not to open it. He put it in his pocket.

It was a late night. He staggered into his room at dawn. He wasn’t drunk but he was exhausted. He lay on his bed. The light in the room was that cool blue half-light of daybreak. It reminded him of another place, another time. It is a holy light, he thought. He remembered the letter.

He opened the envelope that his mother had sent him. He unfolded a letter. “I thought you might like to have these,” the letter said. “Louis’ tears.” The letter was signed, "Marielle, Louis' sister"

He opened the second piece of paper. In the centre of the paper it simply said, “Je veux vous aimer. Je veux vous aimer la même voie que je veux respirer l'air.” In places the words were blotchy. He stared at the blotches. He drank them in.

He called the familiar number. He waited for the familiar voice.

“Louis,” he said.

“Adam.”

“I need your assistance,” Adam said.

“I will do my best.”

Adam clumsily read out the French sentences. There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“I think I can make a fair translation, but I wanted to be sure,” Adam continued.

The silence continued. Adam smiled at it.

“ _I want to love you. I want to love you the way I want to breathe air_. Is that correct?”

Louis answered him in French. The sentences flowed out of him like water. His voice was as soft as water. Adam only half listened. He was thinking of the white pathway through the desert in his dream, and of how quickly he could arrive in Paris, and of how wonderfully empty he felt inside.

“Do you understand?” Louis said in English.

“Yes,” Adam said. “I understand perfectly.” In the beautiful stony desert of his mind he saw a small dark figure. He mentally began running to meet him.


End file.
